How will your kids remember you?

“When you ask people what possessions they would rescue from their burning house, one of the most frequent answers is the photograph album or a computer with their digital images. (…) This impulse to save our recorded memories is a powerful force which tells us much about the role of photography in our lives and our constant desire to distil our most precious moments into images”, Duncan O’Neil, Digital photography school.

Family PortraitsFamily Portraits London - Retratos Familia Montevideo

Photography has become a thing of a second. We take selfies with our phones and share them with the rest of the world in exchange of hearts or likes. Most of the times we don’t even notice if the light is right, if somebody has the eyes closed… sometimes the picture it is so blurry or dark, we can’t guess who is on it.

Phones and photo cameras are so accessible, and photographic manuals are just a click away. There is a market for Camera bags for mums out there, and they are beautiful! (I have one, by the way, a diaper bag call Betsy, from Jo Totes, but no, I have no babies).
With the rush of the moment, with that prompt to capture every single second of our lives, how do we separate an everyday picture from the one that is special?

Family PortraitsFamily Portraits London - Retratos Familia Montevideo

I got a booking from a couple from Singapore, their names in English were Michael and Michelle, and they were celebrating their 25 year wedding anniversary. When I asked them why they chose a photo session, she replied: because we want something special that stays like we are now forever.

That is a picture: a still second, from now till forever. How many people got to know their grandparents because of the pictures hanging at mom and dad`s house; and, sometimes, that picture becomes “grandpa” as a personification of the unknown human being.

Family PortraitsFamily Portraits London - Retratos Familia Montevideo

The challenge is for the photographer as well, now more than ever we need to improve ourselves, to excel and make our work worth the time and money. How do we make our picture memorable? How are we going to create an image worth passing generation to generation?